Nintendo is considering making controllers for smartphones

At Nintendo’s annual shareholders’ meeting, Shinya Takahashi, chief executive of the planning and development division, said it is possible for Nintendo to develop controllers for ‘smart devices’.

The announcement was in response to a question during the meeting. The question of whether Nintendo has plans to make physical controllers in the future followed a thought from one of the attendees about touch screens of smart devices and that they may not always be suitable for playing action games.

Takahashi said that there are already physical controllers on the market for smart devices and that it is possible that Nintendo is also developing “something new” in that area. On the other hand, Takahashi thinks it’s “Nintendo’s way of thinking” to look for ways that action games don’t require a physical controller when using a touchscreen.

He prefers to imagine that the Japanese company makes applications in a form that can best be described as ‘Nintendo-esque’, without directly attaching a form factor to it. Nintendo is also making wider use of its characters and other intellectual property, for example in films. The company says that Nintendo can collaborate with other developers of both software and hardware in the future. Nintendo is already working with DeNa Co. for the development of projects for smart devices.